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Microsoft Endpoint Manager


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It’s Microsoft Ignite 2019 and they’ve have announced Microsoft Endpoint Manager – the next generation of their desktop and endpoint management strategy. It brings together the various disparate elements including:

  • System Center Config Manager (SCCM)
  • Intune
  • Device Management Admin Center
  • Desktop Analytics

It will be interesting to see if other desktop related elements come under here too, in time.

As part of this, Microsoft are making Intune licenses available free of charge to all SCCM licensed customers – to manage Windows devices. If you want to manage non-Windows devices, paid licenses will still be required.

See more from Microsoft here – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/11/04/use-the-power-of-cloud-intelligence-to-simplify-and-accelerate-it-and-the-move-to-a-modern-workplace/

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Microsoft Product Terms: November 2019


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I’ve taken a look at some of the highlights of this month’s Microsoft Product Terms document.

Big news is SQL Server 2019 is here – with a new SKU type and expanded fail-over rights.

We now have “SQL Server Big Data Node (BDN)” – available in 2-core packs via EA & EES. Requires a “master node” of SQL Std/Ent core with SA and includes certain SA rights.

Each SQL Server Ent Core license with SA gives 8 BDN licenses and each SQL Server Std Core license with SA gives 1 BDN license, when assigned to a “master node”.

The updated fail-over info is there too, but I’ll look at that properly in a separate article.

New language that M365 & O365 F1 licenses can only be assigned to users without a dedicated device.

“A Dedicated Device is a computing device used for work with a 10.1” screen or larger, used by the user more than 60% of the user’s total work time during any 90-day period”

F1 licenses are aimed at users who tend not have a device – drivers, nurses, warehouse staff etc. but I know some organisations are looking at them as a way to license traditional office workers and reduce costs. This new language looks to prevent that.

The new Project Plan 1, 3, and 5 licenses are added – only available via CSP. Plan 1 not available in France or South Korea for some reason. 🤔

Terms have been added to cover Azure Spot offers. <– Interestingly, I haven’t seen Microsoft use this term themselves until now. They have referred to them as “low-priority VMs” in Azure, with Spot being a term used by Amazon AWS.

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Cloudy with a chance of Licensing podcast – coming soon!


I put out a LinkedIn post and tweet the other week to se who’d be interested in joining me on a Microsoft-focused podcast…and it turns out quiete a few people would! The response was fantastic and means that the CWACOL podcast will definitely be happening – and soon. I’ve got a few things to get out of the way first and then I can start recording some awesome podcasts with some awesome people 😁

If you’ve already been in touch, thank you! If not, and you fancy chatting about anything and everything Microsoft – licensing, new products, hardware, the partner channel, working with Microsoft, Surface, development, ISV, etc. – drop me a comment/tweet/LinkedIn DM/email etc. and we’ll get something setup.

Look out for the first episode in the coming weeks!

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Microsoft & SAP Embrace


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Project Embrace is a new initiative from SAP to help their customers move to the cloud, and digitally transform, quickly and easily. Microsoft are a key part of this, particularly around SAP S4/HANA running in the Azure cloud. The 2 vendors have created a joint roadmap with guidance to help organisations move from on-premises to the cloud. This new phase takes things further whereby Microsoft & SAP will align their partner ecosystems and collaborate around customer support.

This seems similar in many way to the partnership Microsoft announced with Oracle earlier this year, continuing the trend of “co-ompetition” between some of the largest players in the new cloud world. It can also be seen as a revival of the SAP/Microsoft “Duet” partnership – a joint product they launched many years ago to facilitate collaboration for companies using SAP and Microsoft SharePoint.

It’s interesting that Microsoft talk about being the first global cloud provider to support Project Embrace, although the SAP statement includes Amazon AWS and Google Cloud alongside them.

You can see more from SAP, and the others involved, here.

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Power Platform Personal Payments


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In a move that could be seen as a way to anger asset managers across the world, Microsoft have decided to allow individual users to purchase licenses for Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow via self-service – that is, without any level of central admin oversight.

This move can easily lead to license non-compliance, software over-spend, and a weakening of data security and GDPR compliance. Microsoft say it is “based on customer demand” but I’m sure that pretty much everyone except the users will be against this as an idea. No IT admin, asset manager, procurement manager, or budget controller has ever wished it was easier for users to buy licenses off their own back!

As it stands, there is no way to turn this “feature” off although I feel this might be another one of the increasingly frequent scenarios where Microsoft “listen to feedback” and make some changes. It’s clearly an attempt to reduce the friction at the point of adoption for Microsoft’s Power Platform versus competitor products (such as those from Salesforce) and while the final users may welcome this change, it will only serve to stoke ill will with many in the corporate world I’m sure.

The licensing for Power BI, Flow, and PowerApps has a number of potential pitfalls and allowing decentralised purchasing by people where licensing isn’t a concern is a recipe for disaster. Equally, there will be plenty of cases where users don’t realise that they’re already licensed for some/all of these components, leading to companies paying for more licenses than required. Concerns around data also seem fair – this move will make it more likely that company data is stored in places that can’t be seen by the company overall.

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Microsoft buy Movere


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Microsoft recently announced their acquisition of Movere, a cloud discovery and assessment tool, to bolster their “Azure Migrate” offering.

Movere has been around since 2008 and has, over the last few years, become the tool of choice for Microsoft funded customer SAM/Cloud Readiness engagements – so the acquisition is perhaps no surprise. Microsoft’s main focus these days is getting more customers to move more workloads into their Azure cloud, and this is their next step in that journey; with the aim “to streamline our customers’ journey to the cloud, enabling them to bring innovation and transformation with the power of Azure”.

I wonder what this means for the other ISV partners involved in the Azure Migrate program, will they see a lack of focus on their elements of the scheme? Posting on LinkedIn brought a few interesting comments/questions: one person suggested that Movere is a “one trick pony” while another asked if this new acquisition could become the “ILMT* for Azure”.

*ILMT is the IBM License Metric Tool, which (most) IBM customers must use in order to prove compliance with certain license metrics.

Whenever a big vendor like Microsoft make an acquisition, it’s always interesting to see what happens to the technology, what it’s used for, how it’s licensed etc. I’ll definitely be watching for Movere to be added to the Product Terms!

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Microsoft make security magic


Back in 2005, Microsoft bought an anti-virus company called Sybari to, as this ComputerWorld article put it, “give them more of a presence in the enterprise security market”. They rcontinued with the “Antigen” line and had variants for Exchange, SharePoint etc. and used multiple different scanning engines including Norman, Sophos, Kaspersky, and Computer Associates (CA).

I was a reseller at this point, focused primarily on software. It’s going back quite a while now to be fair but I remember it as being very difficult to sell it, or even to have a proper conversation about it. Those were the days of security dominance by Mcafee, Symantec, and CA eTrust – and Microsoft were not taken seriously when it came to security.

Alongside this, they also had “Internet Security & Acceleration (ISA) Server” and “Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG)”. The former subsequently became “Threat Management Gateway (TMG)” and the latter, “Unified Application Gateway (UAG)”. I remember ISA/TMG being relatively successful, certainly more so than the desktop anti-virus, and I also remember being surprised when Microsoft turned TMG 2010 End of Life with no replacement! We had a range of customers who had been using it for years and, as it covered firewall, router, VPN, web cache and more, it had become quite integral to their server side setup; Microsoft choosing not to replace it definitely led to some negative sentiment among organisations! They announced in 2012 that there’d be no further development and it would no longer be available to buy from the end of that year – although it is still in mainstream support until 2020! If you’re still running TMG 2010, I’d love to hear from you! 😁

Regardless of the product and its capabilities though, there was still a lot of anti-Microsoft sentiment, distrust, and cynicism stemming from the various legal cases of the late 90’s/early 00’s – and this seemed particularly strong in the security space.

All this is to show how far Microsoft have come in the security space in this 14 year period. Now, in Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, they are top for “ability to execute” and 2nd (behind CrowdStrike) for “completeness of vision”.

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/08/23/gartner-names-microsoft-a-leader-in-2019-endpoint-protection-platforms-magic-quadrant/

For them to be so far ahead of established security players like Sophos, Trend Micro, and Symantec is fascinating. Gartner state that Windows Defender Antivirus is the market share leader for business endpoints – quite the turnaround! It’s clear the work Microsoft has been doing around Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (MDATP) (formerly WDATP) is paying off. Among the “cautions” mentioned by Gartner are:

  • Licensing is difficult to navigate
  • Windows 10 E5 is more expensive than competitive offerings
  • The MDATP features aren’t all available on Windows 7/8
  • No support for XP
  • Group Policy settings can be complex

Nothing too major there really, certainly not compared to many of the other participants. As we move towards 2020, Microsoft’s security game is strong. Not just on the desktop but it so many other areas, some of the cloud security and information protection products seem really good and innovative in numerous areas. I think it’s safe to say that Microsoft are a security company now – as well as everything else!

Check out the Microsoft post here – https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/08/23/gartner-names-microsoft-a-leader-in-2019-endpoint-protection-platforms-magic-quadrant/.

 

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Microsoft reduce Azure Archive Storage costs


Azure Archive Storage is used for less important data, where an organisation is happy to wait – perhaps hours – for access to their data. This means it is significantly cheaper than regular Azure storage.

Files, Paper, Office, Paperwork, Stack, Work, Data

Microsoft have announced that prices have dropped “by up to 50 percent in some regions” – although they haven’t given more precise info as to what reductions have taken place in what areas. That said, if you’re using this – you should see a reduction in your next cloud bill…or at least that section of it!

See Microsoft’s announcement here – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/we-re-making-azure-archive-storage-better-with-new-lower-pricing/

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Microsoft: Windows & AI – all change


On March 29th, Microsoft announced another company re-org. This one sees some big changes to the Windows side of things and gives a good overview of where Microsoft’s sees its future.

The biggest news is that Terry Myerson – Executive Vice President of the Windows & Devices Group (WDG) is leaving, and the team is being divided across two new entities.

Experiences & Devices

This team will be led by Rajesh Jha, who’s been at Microsoft since 1990, is a member of the Senior Leadership Team and most recently headed up engineering for Office 365.

In his email to Microsoft employees, Satya Nadella says:
“Computing experiences are evolving to include multiple senses and are no longer bound to one device at a time but increasingly spanning many as we move from home to work and on the go”

Hopefully, this gives an idea of where this team is heading – creating software, and devices, that work together in ways that match how people want to use them. Software experiences that work seamlessly across multiple devices – of different types and with different operating systems – are what more people are looking for. As the consumerisation of IT continues, users having multiple devices with Windows, iOS and Android will more and more become the norm within business settings.

As Nadella goes on to say in his missive:
“These modern needs, habits and expectations of our customers are motivating us to bring Windows, Office, and third-party applications and devices into a more cohesive Microsoft 365 experience.”

It’s interesting that 3rd party apps are included here. He could be referring to managing them via EMS (the 3rd element of Microsoft 365) or is he perhaps hinting at something else?

Cloud & AI

Scott Guthrie (often seen in a red shirt) will lead this team. Guthrie has been at Microsoft since 1997 and is known for his work in many areas, including .NET. Satya Nadella says the goal of this team is to “drive platform coherence and compelling value across all layers of the tech stack” – this will include things such as “distributed computing fabric”, AI infrastructure, tools, and higher-level services around knowledge and cognition.

Other changes

There are more teams being created and more people being moved, all to support the drive towards a better device/app experience and to further the growth of cloud and AI. These include:

Panos Panay

The man in a large part responsible for the success of the Surface product line is now “Chief Product Officer”, tasked with “creating new categories and opportunities for the entire ecosystem”. This is an interesting move – what other devices, that wouldn’t come under the Surface banner, could be on the horizon?

Joe Belfiore

He will continue leading Windows experiences and “drive Windows innovation in partnership with the PC and device ecosystem”. Satya also says that “Joe will share more about the Windows roadmap at Build” – with the recent talk of multi-user editions of Windows (to facilitate access to remote desktops without requiring Windows Server), I’ll certainly be paying attention between May 7-9.

Windows Platform Team

This team will move into Azure team and help “accelerate (Microsoft’s) efforts to build a unified distributed computing infrastructure and application model”. Interestingly, the team led by Roanne Sones, which deals with technical engagement with OEMs, ODMs and silicon vendors, will also join the Azure team.

New teams

Two new teams have been created:

• AI Perception & Mixed Reality
• AI Cognitive Services & Platform

Which certainly show that Microsoft’s focus on Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality (such as HoloLens) is becoming ever more integral to Microsoft’s future aspirations.
As part of this, Harry Shum (EVP, AI & Research) & Brad Smith (Chief Legal Officer) have created the AI & Ethics in Engineering & Research (AETHER) committee, to help keep Microsoft’s AI technologies in check.

Further Reading

https://news.microsoft.com/2018/03/29/satya-nadella-email-to-employees-embracing-our-future-intelligent-cloud-and-intelligent-edge/

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Changes to Microsoft SA e-learning


Microsoft Software Assurance offers a range of benefits, one of which is e-learning.

For those of you currently using this within your organisation, be aware that it is migrating to a new site from July 1, 2018. The current site:

Onlinelearning.microsoft.com

will be shut down and become inaccessible.

No courses, transcripts, certificates or reporting will be available via the existing site, so anything you wish to retain will need to be downloaded prior to July 1, 2018. This also means that any courses currently being taken will need to be completed before that date, otherwise all progress will be lost.

Why?
 The new site is said to offer a much better user experience with faster access to content as well as interactive learning plans, customizable cheat sheets, and quick start guides. Microsoft have said they will release more information on the new portal soon.

Update

The new site is https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/ and it covers a range of Microsoft training across:

  • Azure
  • Dynamics
  • PowerApps
  • Flow
  • PowerBI

with more planned over time.

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